


My mother taught me

by imsfire



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: AU, Character Study, Family, Gen, Jyn appreciation week, Jyn finds a way to allow herself to remember her mother without bitterness, Lyra is only a memory I'm afraid, Memories, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Swimming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-25
Updated: 2017-05-25
Packaged: 2018-11-04 21:50:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10999689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: Jyn remembers the sea, and swimming in the sea; the thrilling cold of the waves and the warmth of her mother’s hands, guiding her, steadying her, cautiously releasing her for a moment and then catching her safely again.  That one short summer they had, all the family together, before the winter and the rain and the day of the ‘troopers.





	My mother taught me

It’s a mile’s walk from the base, down a peaceful track through the jungle.  The path is a bit overgrown; Jyn imagines it being worn by off-duty personnel in years past, back when things were less desperate.  Few if any have the leisure or the energy now to stroll off-base at the end of a day’s work.  Jyn feels guilty that she has; but since even now no-one trusts her enough to give her any real work, she has time on her hands, and energy to burn.  She walks, glad to be alone; and she finds it.  A sinkhole.

Blue-green water, impossibly clear, reflecting back the sky from its irregular oval face.  Overhanging trees, foliage trailing almost into the water.  There’s a natural wall of stone all around, grey-gold limestone, strata angled and split by earth tremors long ago.  At one side a rock fall has left a kind of beach, like a stack of flat slabs tilting into the pool; and just above there someone has cut hand and foot-holds into the cliff, a rough ladder.  It’s a swimming hole.

Jyn remembers the sea, and swimming in the sea; the thrilling cold of the waves and the warmth of her mother’s hands, guiding her, steadying her, cautiously releasing her for a moment and then catching her safely again.  That one short summer they had, all the family together, before the winter and the rain and the day of the ‘troopers.

She remembers her delight when she first swam three clear strokes on her own.  The equal delight on Lyra’s face.  Her rapturous excitement as their lessons advanced from there so quickly.

It’s midsummer on Yavin 4.  There are still several hours before sunset.  The sinkhole is heaven-coloured, a calm eye gazing at her without judgement.  Jyn picks her way along the overgrown path to the way down.  Once at the bottom, she unlaces her boots, pulls off her socks, slacks, vest, shirt.  Stands on a sun-warmed oblique of limestone and slowly walks into the water.  Ankle deep, knee deep; the surface is beginning to be slippery underfoot, so she crouches into the water and pushes off clumsily.  Bumps her knee; and then she’s swimming.

The movements come back as if she had last done them just a few weeks ago, not a whole lifetime.  _Stretch out your arms, Jyn, that’s right, now draw them back and push the water away under you.  Kick your legs out like a springer, out and then in.  Trust the water.  That’s it, you’re swimming!_

She’d worn a funny little all-in-one garment Lyra had knitted out of reused cotton yarn.  It soaked up water like a powder sponge, and when they came out onto the beach at the end of their daily swim it would hang baggily under her little bottom and drip like something in a cartoon.  Now she swims in her breast-band and underpants, and the limbs she stretches out and draws back carefully are not a child’s stubby suntanned ones but long and pale in the glass-clear water.

The sea was always cold; this water is warm.  It’s almost blood heat at the surface, with a sensual coolness coming and going in little currents below.  Instead of a biting brininess it has a softly mineral taste, like good drinking water with a crisp undernote.

 _Stretch out your arms, Jyn.  That’s right, you’re swimming!_   Lyra’s voice is excited and loving in her mind, encouraging, hopeful, thrilled.  Her mother so seldom sounded like that.  So seldom said such happy things.  _You can do it!  Oh, you’re doing so well!_

_Trust the water, think how it surrounds and supports you.  Think of all the living things in this great wide ocean; the water supports all of them too.  And it makes the clouds, which make the rain, which makes our crops grow!  Trust the water, Jyn, it won’t hurt you, it’s like the Force, all around you, holding you up.  It will never drop you._

Tiny dark fish swim by below Jyn, a shoal of midnight-blue needles darting.  Then two larger ones, like fat finned pods.  On the uneven rocks at the bottom their shadows move with them, jinking and dancing among ripples of refracted light.  Pushing through the water above Jyn feels like a giantess; she’s a sail barge, a gleaming ivory battleship from Mon Cala.

When she looks up she sees there are creepers growing round the sides of the sinkhole.  Little skeins of tubular flowers hang down, white shading into gold, scattering ochre pollen and breaths of heady scent onto the water.  The ocean on Lah’mu always smelled of salt and cold ozone, and high winds coming.  The air here is warm, like the water, and sweet, and safe.  She can think of Lyra here, can conjure up her voice and long-ago loving face, her big rare smile and the way she swept her wet hair back out of her face.  Seawater streaming down the front of her bathing costume, forming rivulets to either side of her crystal pendant.  _That’s it, you’ve got it, you’re swimming all on your own!  You did it, Jyn – I’m so proud of you!_

That evening in the mess hall Cassian asks “How was your day?”  He’s using the cane less, lately, but he looks worn out.  She’s ashamed of how much less work she has than him.  Please let someone decide to trust her soon. 

She bites back the desire to voice that frustration yet again; she’s got something better to say today.  “I went swimming.  I found a sinkhole.  You should come sometime.”

“The cenote?  I know it.”  He looks at her curiously.  “I didn’t know you could swim.”

“My mother taught me.”  She so seldom speaks of her family; it’s odd how easy it is now.

“So did mine.”  He smiles, slow and cautious as always.  His eyes go distant for a moment, a remembering look; then he comes back to her and smiles a little more.  “I’d love to know more about your mother, one day.”

“Her name was Lyra – but you know that.  You would have liked her, I think.  She never gave up on anything…”  She sits telling him random simple things as they come back to her.  Listens, shyly, as he tells her stories of his own in return, stories of his own mother, his mamí, Mariána. 

Jyn imagines her, a thin dark-haired woman with his cheekbones, his shy smile; and pictures her suddenly swimming with Lyra.  Both of them in the cold clean sea, supported by the water; both of them in the cenote, at rest in the warmth and watching their children.  Safe in the warm eye of heaven.


End file.
